The Contractor: Chapter 5

After the trip to Torros, Paris had three days back at his usual bar before his next supply run for Chakotay. "I've been told to pay you the going rate from now on," the Maquis captain commented.

"Oh?"

"Torres said you know you're being fleeced," Chakotay explained. "Said we better pay you better or you're going to sell us out to someone who pays better."

"I'm not going to do that," Paris assured him.

"I know," Chakotay said, even though Paris had no idea if he believed him or not. Trust nobody seemed to be the going philosophy out here, and it was probably a good one. "It's easier to do what my engineer asks than fight her on something inconsequential." Paris didn't know if Chakotay was calling the payment inconsequential or if he was using that to refer to Paris himself, and he didn't ask. He also didn't ask if Torres was really concerned about him selling out Chakotay's cell to the highest bidder, or if this was an attempt at getting him out of the game by encouraging him to buy his own ship, some junker with a replicator that would allow him to float around in space and fly without having to answer to anybody. It was a nice thought. He didn't know the half-Klingon well enough to know if she was being nice, but he decided to take the idea anyway. He could use some nice people in his life.

Two months had gone by since the trip to Torros before Chakotay approached Paris about flying the Val Jean again. It would be the same deal: Chakotay needed to take the shuttle on a side mission, so Paris would fly the Val Jean and its crew, they would meet up, and Paris would take the shuttle back to their usual home base. Where he would probably get drunk yet again at the same bar until Chakotay or somebody else approached him with another contract.

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

If the crew had warmed to Paris at all in his two-month absence, it didn't show. In fact, there was one new crew member—at least, one crew member that Paris hadn't noticed before—a tall Vulcan man with that ever-present look of disapproval that Vulcans always seemed to have. Paris didn't know what a Vulcan was doing in an inherently emotional fight such as the Maquis, but he didn't ask. For all he knew, the man had lived on one of the colonies in the now-demilitarized zone, maybe had lost some family members like so many others in the crew.

He didn't ask, Tuvok didn't tell, but he could feel the man's disapproving gaze in the back of his neck at just about every waking hour.

It was the same routine as before: bridge, replicator, bridge, berth, replicator, bridge, etc, etc ad nauseam, until he no longer had any idea what time it was and only the navigational array gave him any hint on how long he had been aboard and flying that mission.

B'Elanna Torres was still on board the Val Jean; Paris knew that because she had been a spitting cobra from the moment he came aboard, to the point that her own crew—even Seska, whom he thought was her friend—was giving her a wide berth and staying out of the half-Klingon engineer's way. Paris had a hard time reconciling this angry force of nature with the tired, almost resigned young woman who had sat with him on the bridge as he navigated endless plasma storms, and by halfway through this mission to attack some weapon's depot or something, he had convinced himself that the conversation and his confessions of what had led him to that particular area of space had all been a figment of his imagination.

About a week into the flight, they came into a sector that had decent Starfleet presence. Starfleet typically tended to turn a blind eye on random ships flying through the area, unless it was someone doing something unsafe or blatantly illegal, or if it was a ship they knew. Paris hadn't confirmed that the Val Jean was on a list of known Maquis ships, but he didn't want this to be the time that he found out one way or the other, nor did he want to be on the receiving end of over-eager ensigns looking to prove themselves in the eyes of their senior officers. "I can hide us from their sensors," Torres said, interrupting Paris' stream of consciousness ramblings to Tuvok on the topic. He stopped talking and turned to her, completely unaware that she had entered the bridge—she was standing by the ladder instead of sitting at the ops station she occasionally occupied—and intrigued by what this fix would be.

Taking his silence as disbelief, the engineer flushed and frowned. "Thoron and duranium shadows," she said impatiently, as if it was something any child should have been able to figure out. Without waiting for a response from either Paris or Tuvok, she crossed to the ops station with two quick strides and entered some commands. "It's not foolproof, obviously," she said, her voice clipped. "But even if they detect us, they won't register that we have any sort of weapons system and they'd probably leave us alone."

"Good to know," Paris said. "Thanks." He was still going to keep an eye out for Starfleet ships and stay as far out of their sensor range as possible, but he'd take any Maquis tricks he could get. Assuming this didn't result in any 'Good Samaritan' captains deciding to give them a hand with their apparent thoron leak.

Torres stayed on the bridge to monitor the chemical sensor net she had deployed, and eventually, Tuvok had left to do… something. If his schedule was anything like Paris', he was either eating or heading to bed. "I didn't even make it far enough into my Starfleet career to get to the point where I could ruin it," Torres commented. Paris blinked in surprise, and then said the first thing that popped into his head.

"You were in Starfleet?"

"Not really," she said. "I lasted three semesters at the Academy. Finished my last final in December of my second year, packed my bags, and headed out."

"Why'd you leave?"

She shrugged a shoulder, her eyes still on her console. "We weren't a good fit," she said simply. From what he had seen on the Val Jean, she was probably right, but Starfleet had missed out on a damn good engineer.

He pondered that for a minute, then wondered how one went from the Academy to the backwaters of the Cardassian DMZ, and the most obvious answer hit him. Not everyone had grown up on Earth, after all. "Did you grow up out here?"

She shook her head. "No," she said simply, then added, "Beta quadrant. Kessik IV."

He knew about Kessik because it was one of the tips of the Delta Triangle; he had done a report in a secondary school history class about the Delta Triangle, the ships that had disappeared there, and the theories as to why. "How'd you end up out here?"

She shrugged a shoulder. "Same as you," she said simply. "I wanted to go somewhere where I could work and people wouldn't care about my credentials. Or the fact that I didn't have any." She paused as she considered her own words. "I'll probably finish my engineering degree at some point," she said quickly, as if she was afraid that he thought less of someone without a degree. "But I'm a little too busy for that right now."

No kidding; as it was, it was good that she didn't sleep much, because the hours she spent tweaking the engines was the only thing that kept that bag of bolts moving. "What's your plan?" he asked, remembering how she had asked him the same thing the last time. "Stay with the Maquis and hope that you end up in jail instead of dead? Federation penal system seems to be focused on rehabilitation. I imagine they'd let you finish your degree then."

She must have picked up on the sarcasm of his words, because her face flushed in anger. "Are you suggesting that I just leave? Just so I can some degree that I don't even need?"

She certainly demonstrated that she didn't need a degree to do her job; the Val Jean was proof enough of that. "You asked me why I don't just get a ship and leave. Why don't you?"

He didn't think it was possible, but her face got even more red. "Because I'm not some mercenary just after a paycheck!" she replied. He knew the words were supposed to sting, but they didn't. It wasn't technically false, even though his motivations were more about flying than credits. "Do you even know what the Cardassians do to these colonists? To the Bajorans? Somebody needs to stand up to them, and it's clearly not the Federation!"

He had his own thoughts on the fact that Starfleet and the rest of the Federation didn't do more for the Bajorans or the colonists, but he wasn't going to go get into a sociopolitical discussion with an angry half-Klingon engineer on the bridge of a ship. He could tell that she was motivated by her anger at the injustice of it all, and couldn't blame her for that, even though there was a whole reality that she wasn't considering and that it was in the Federation's best interests to avoid war with the Cardassians, even at the expense of some colonists—who had been given the opportunity to leave and stubbornly chose not to—and turning a blind eye to the Bajoran occupation. "Why is it your fight?"

"Why isn't it yours?" she shot back. "I thought Starfleet was supposed to teach officers to stand up for the little guy, but I guess that only applies when it's convenient to do so."

He took a deep breath; this was not a discussion he planned on getting in, not on that bridge or at any other time. "The Maquis aren't going to win this," he said. "Do you honestly believe that you're going to defeat the Cardassians? Or Starfleet, much less both?"

She shook her head sadly, and he got the impression that she was disappointed that he didn't get it. "I forget who said it or about what, and I'm probably butchering the quote, but to the oppressor, to not win is to lose. For the underdog, to not lose it to win. We're not going to take over the Cardassian Empire or the Federation, we know that. All we want is for them to acknowledge that what they're doing is wrong and to leave."

"Do you know much about Earth history?" She blinked at the apparent non-sequitur before shaking her head. "Do you know where the word 'maquis' comes from?" he continued.

"No," she admitted.

"It's from Earth's second world war," he explained. "It was the French resistance to the Nazi occupation of France. Initially, it was young men who escaped into the mountains avoid being conscripted into the German forces, but they gradually became organized—somewhat—into active resistance and guerrilla warfare. Their goal was to make the terrain unpredictable and therefore dangerous for the Germans, and therefore leave them alone."

"What happened to them?" Torres asked. "Did they drive out the Germans?"

He shook his head. "No, that was allied armies that did that. The British. The Americans. The Maquis helped divide the attention of the Germans, which helped the allied forces gain footholds."

"So they were successful," she said, almost triumphantly. "They didn't lose."

"Who do you think is going to come to help you?" he asked. "The Federation has a treaty with the Cardassians. Starfleet isn't on your side, either."

"If we can just make them realize that they're wrong—"

"That is not something the Federation does easily," he interrupted, and she flushed again.

"You've made it pretty clear where you stand on this," she said, now clearly annoyed. "So why even stay? If this is such a pointless fight, why be involved in it at all?"

"I already told you why."

"You don't get to be halfway in this!" she exclaimed. "Do you think Starfleet is going to care that you were only a 'contractor' if you get caught? They're still going to throw you in jail. Cardassians would do worse. If you don't believe in the Maquis, you need to leave while you can."